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User: tepples

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  1. Re:Holding a phone before buying it on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    How can someone looking to buy a [product] from an online merchant get a feel for how the [product] will feel in his or her hand?

    The same way you do it for almost anything you buy online..

    Namely? (And preferably without risking a ban for abusing returns.)

  2. Re:Disability benefits on Chinese Scientist Who Gene-Edited Babies Fired by University (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    The researcher should require proof that the parents can financially support the child and maintain the requisite protective insurance
    policies before being allowed to participate in research that involves a parent becoming pregnant

    Good luck proving that neither parent will subsequently lose a job. How much would private long-term unemployment insurance cost?

  3. Re:Amazon is not a showroom on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    Tip #2: Don't buy any phone that one of your friends / work colleagues doesn't already have.

    I see two practical problems with applying tip #2. If everybody followed tip #2, nobody would queue for launch. Then how would new products enter the market in the first place? Unless I'm missing something, each customer would end up having to know someone who (knows someone who)^n works for the manufacturer.

    In addition, for a lot of people such as myself, most of their social life is online, and either they work from home or their work colleagues share few of their interests. How do they go about finding relevant local friends?

  4. Re:Disability benefits on Chinese Scientist Who Gene-Edited Babies Fired by University (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Until age 18, supporting their child up to adulthood is the parent's responsibility, so the monetary value of the initial loss is $0.

    With the exception of parents who qualify for benefits from social safety net programs, such as WIC, SNAP, CHIP, TANF, Section 8, school lunch assistance, and special education. Ethics assessment for human germline genetic engineering would include estimating how resulting children may end up draining these programs. Or are you anticipating a provision that disqualifies parents of children resulting from experimental genetic engineering from receiving these entitlements, analogous to the "Stop BEZOS" proposal?

  5. Amazon is not a showroom on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    Buy phone outright.

    Which U.S. electronics showroom chains sell major brand phones outright? Amazon is not a showroom.

    Buy phone from phone manufacturer via retail website.

    How would someone going this route determine a phone's hand-fit?

  6. With a threat of a restocking fee on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    The advantage of buying a locked phone is that you get to buy a phone in person. In turn, the advantage of buying a phone in person is not having to pay a restocking fee and round-trip shipping cost should you end up deciding that a phone purchased online doesn't suit you.

  7. Re: Breach of Faith on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    until they pay off their devices

    Is the carrier obligated to push the unlock packet the moment it receives payment in full for the device?

  8. Holding a phone before buying it on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    unlocked and carrier-agnostic phones are readily available on Amazon on other online merchants.

    How can someone looking to buy a phone from an online merchant get a feel for how the phone will feel in his or her hand?

  9. Re:Property is dead on Android Q Will Include More Ways For Carriers To SIM Lock Your Phone (9to5google.com) · · Score: 1

    All of the major carriers in the US allow you to bring your own phone

    Which doesn't help if the vast majority of stores in which you can see and touch a phone before buying it sell only locked phones.

  10. Re:Disability benefits on Chinese Scientist Who Gene-Edited Babies Fired by University (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Those volunteering to be experimented upon should be required to carry adequate long term and short term disability and health insurance, so if they become disabled, they make the claim under their disability policy for full support

    Good luck finding parents willing to foot the bill for private insurance in case a child resulting from genetic engineering ends up with a disability expected to last the child's entire life. How much would that even cost?

  11. Disability benefits on Chinese Scientist Who Gene-Edited Babies Fired by University (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    so who is the representative of "god" that gets to decide Yes/No whether an idea can be tested on humans

    My first guess is the parts of the government that pay for disability and medical entitlements. They may have to cover lifelong costs of the results of the experiment.

  12. Re:Satellite Internet on We'll Likely See a Rise in Internet Blackouts in 2019 (newamerica.org) · · Score: 1

    What prevents sneakernetting the SDHC card to a station with a dish antenna?

  13. Hornsdale leads the way on We'll Likely See a Rise in Internet Blackouts in 2019 (newamerica.org) · · Score: 1

    in on of the (still) industrial countries called Germany [...] On [2019-01-12] the frequency fell from 50 to 48.8

    It looks like your country needs a Tesla battery like the one at Hornsdale, South Australia, to help even out peaks on the grid. In 2017-12, Hornsdale Power Reserve immediately compensated for a failure at a power plant nearly 1,000 km away. Or is sustained power loss on the German grid during calm, cloudy winter days bigger than even a 400+ gigajoule battery can correct?

  14. Don't expect packaging help from the community on GitHub Seeks Feedback on 'Open Source Sustainability' (github.blog) · · Score: 1

    You can distribute your computer program under any license you want. That doesn't mean others have to put their resources toward helping you package your software for various distributions. And if your license doesn't meet FSF's four-point definition of free software or OSI's 10-point definition of open source software, you're not going to see nearly as many people willing to spend such resources.

  15. I'd do anything for love, but I won't cheat on you on The Economics of Streaming is Making Songs Shorter (qz.com) · · Score: 2

    Even in the chorus before the first verse, listeners learn two of the things Meat Loaf's character won't do are "lie to you" and "forget the way you feel right now". Later "do it better than I do it with you" and "be screwing around" are added. I understand all this to mean he won't "cheat", or swing without Lorraine Crosby's character's permission. It wouldn't be infeasible for a shorter edit of the song to keep the same message.

  16. Day-age creationism on Ask Slashdot: Why Are Scientists Constantly Surprised By What They Discover? · · Score: 1

    We can't prove that there wasn't a shadowy actor who made slight nudges to evolution over the course of billions of years to lead amino acids to humanity.

    In other words, we cannot yet disprove theistic evolution.

    Personally, I have nothing against you if you want to believe in a god who made really tiny nudges like that, good on you

    Nor do I.

    but that's not the god most religious people appear to believe in.

    Many Christian denominations, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, accept the scientific consensus that Earth is billions of years old. Old Earthers since Saint Augustine in the fifth century have reconciled this with the creation week of Genesis 1 using a day-age theory, citing other scripture to justify interpreting a "day" of creation as a metaphor for an arbitrarily long era. Some day-agers accept evolution in a theistic form; others, the progressive creationists, posit created families within which God has allowed microevolution to happen.

    Now as for "most", I'm curious about the fraction of believers who belong to old-Earth denominations, young-Earth denominations, or denominations that take no position on Earth's age. The Roman Catholic Church falls into the last category.

  17. Pay Me License is not OSI approvable on GitHub Seeks Feedback on 'Open Source Sustainability' (github.blog) · · Score: 1

    Pay Me License violates point 1 of OSI's Open Source Definition.

  18. Is GitLab OK? on GitHub Seeks Feedback on 'Open Source Sustainability' (github.blog) · · Score: 1

    If you see the phrase send us a link to your GitHub project on a job posting you can be sure GitHub made a back room deal with the job poster

    Have you asked these employers if they'll consider repositories on GitLab, Gitea on your VPS, or Gitea on your shared hosting?

  19. Noddy: Toyland Detective is also failure to ask on 'I Got Death Threats For Writing a Bad Review of Aquaman' (huffingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    the movies "Captain America: Civil War" and "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" annoyed me because (for one reason) the main conflict could have been avoided if the characters had simply talked and listened to each other.

    Half the episodes of Noddy: Toyland Detective are the same way, incidentally.

  20. Re:Why not Vimeo? on LucasFilm Rescues Darth Vader Fan Film From YouTube Copyright Fight (newsweek.com) · · Score: 1

    Have you thought about putting the same content on Vimeo?

    I thought about it but rejected it, at first due to its six-year ban on video game content (in effect from July 2008 through October 2014), and later for its $240 per year Vimeo PRO subscription that is required in order to avoid a vague ban on "commercial content" (still in effect). What is the advantage of paying for Vimeo PRO over hosting the videos on your own website?

  21. Commission your own recording of PD composition on LucasFilm Rescues Darth Vader Fan Film From YouTube Copyright Fight (newsweek.com) · · Score: 1

    A recording that you commissioned by contacting someone on, say, the FamiTracker Discord server is copyrighted but licensed to you under favorable terms.

  22. Re:The garden wall provides no safety. on Google Play Malware Used Phones' Motion Sensors To Conceal Itself (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    What resources are recommended for a startup video game developer that is getting into the handheld gaming hardware market for the first time?

  23. Re:The garden wall provides no safety. on Google Play Malware Used Phones' Motion Sensors To Conceal Itself (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Let me rephrase how I understood your post: "Any company disagreeing with Nintendo's monopoly on handheld gaming with buttons ought to be building and selling its own hardware." Do I understand you correctly?

  24. Games have less need to negotiate on Netflix Says It Has 10 Percent of All TV Time In the US (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Which points out an advantage of Fortnite over online video distributors: Epic Games owns worldwide rights in Fortnite.

    Historically, feature films and TV series are subject to decades-long exclusive agreements with distributors specializing in one country, which predate wide availability of home broadband. In the case of video games that aren't adaptations of feature films and TV series, one company or a small set of companies typically controls the worldwide distribution right. Thus unlike Netflix and other online video distributors, Epic is unburdened by a need to negotiate with regional distributors separately per country. This allows its marketing to consider an international audience, not separate audiences per country, except in the most authoritarian markets where the government regulates which foreign amusement games are and aren't allowed to be distributed to the public.

  25. Canceling Netflix and CBS without phone call on Netflix Says It Has 10 Percent of All TV Time In the US (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    And at least for my sensibilities there isn't a single TV show worth that much, especially on a reoccurring bill

    Then subscribe to one service for a month, catch up on its originals, cancel, and subscribe to a different service for next month. This works because these services don't carry sport matches, political analysis, entertainment industry awards shows, or other live events with a short shelf life.

    if I want to cancel it, I will need to overcome my anxieties to talk on the phone with a pushy sales person to cancel it

    Websites list the following procedures, which can be completed through the web without use of a telephone. Not being a subscriber to these particular services, I haven't tested them myself.

    Netflix Account > Membership and billing > Cancel membership > Finish cancellation CBS All Access Account > CBS All Access Account > Cancel my subscription > Yes, cancel my subscription

    Which over-the-top service actually requires a phone call to cancel?